Tuesday, December 01, 2009
From Collins Olayinka, Abuja
NIGERIA has assured Uganda of its readiness to render technical assistance to leapfrog the central African country into becoming an oil producing country.
This comes on the heels of government's inability to stop recurrent fuel queues in and around Abuja and some other towns in the country.
Nigeria said the technical assistance it is packaging for Uganda will be done within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD) and the African Union.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Odein Ajumogobia, disclosed this when a Ugandan delegation led by the Minister of State for Energy Development, Mr. Peter Lokeris, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
Ajumogobia told his visitors that Nigeria and Uganda indeed have a common history of having agriculture as the main stay of their economies prior to the discovery of oil.
He cautioned Uganda to learn from Nigeria's experience and should therefore avoid over reliance on her oil resources but should learn to balance the development of her oil sector with other non-oil sectors of the economy; avoiding the pitfall of developing the oil sector at the detriment of the non-oil sectors as in the case of Nigeria.
He also pointed out further that after many decades of exploration of oil in commercial quantities, Nigeria was now at the point of repositioning the oil sector through the Petroleum Industry Bill to achieve the policy of diversification and optimization the benefits available in the hydrocarbon resources.
Speaking further, Ajumogobia explained that the present administration was addressing the issues of local content initiative, corporate social responsibility, manpower development, and the participation of oil producing communities at the local level for the purpose realizing the enormous gains latent in the nation's oil resources.
The Minister assured his Ugandan counterpart that Nigeria would be interested in collaborating with Uganda towards assisting it to develop its young oil industry. He however expressed its satisfaction with the Uganda government for giving Nigeria entrepreneurs the opportunities to participate in the development, exploration and production activities in the Ugandan oil industry.
Lokeris informed Ajumogobia that his country was interested in understudying the Nigerian oil sector especially the success of its local content initiative, revenue optimization, manpower development, oil communities' participation and corporate social responsibility strategies of the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta.
He expressed its country's readiness to learn from Nigeria giving her wealth of experiences in exploration and production areas, saying that Nigeria could offer its country the needed assistance towards growing her small industries in the sector.
Meanwhile, the indecision of the Federal Government over its planned deregulation seems to leave Nigerians in the lurch as they are now at the mercy of marketers whose activities have left many petrol stations without products.
In Abuja, sign of a return of fuel queues started last week Saturday when many motorists were stranded at various bus stops on their way from either fun spots in the city or at family friends' houses.
As at yesterday, many filling stations were out of stock, while those who had rationed it by selling only one or two pumps.
Expectedly, transport fares went up as bus from Kubwa charged N200.00, while commuters from from Suleja had to part with N300.00 to get to work.
Speaking with The Guardian, some commuters and transport operators blamed both government and labour for their woes.
Sikiru Olelekan said: "My brother, you can see what we are going through now. For me, I blame both labour and government for this mess. We have oil and yet we are suffering like this. If government wants to increase through their deregulation policy, they should do it right now and if labour is saying no they should tell government the way forward. Because the way I see it, ordinary Nigerians are made to suffer while government and labour bickers over whether deregulation should be or not."
On his part, a civil servant, Mr. Wole Fawowora, decried latest radio advert by government trying to sell deregulation to the populace and comparing petrol with GSM.
His explanation: "I am ashamed for this country. Imagine government spending millions of Naira to sell deregulation policy to the people through radio advert. It is insulting. It shows that governance is not on duty in this country. I have been on the queue since 6.45am and this is about 11am and still on queue.
"Until government takes a definite step on this deregulation, the queues will never depart totally from the filling station and we will continue to suffer by instalment pure and simple."
However, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has absolved itself of blame over the fuel supply crisis rocking some parts of the country.
In a statement signed by its Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, the corporation blamed the crisis on a directive from petroleum tanker drivers by the National Union of Petroleum and Ntural Gas Workers (NUPENG) to stop bridging to Suleja and also to stop product supply to Abuja to protest a long standing contractual issue between the management of MTEL and Petroleum Tanker Owners.
The tanker drivers and NUPENG, according to NNPC, "are also demanding the repairs of access roads to the depots as a pre-condition to resuming loading of products."
Source: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/business/article03/indexn2_html?pdate=011209&ptitle=Nigeria%20offers%20technical%20assistance%20to%20Uganda%20on%20oil%20production
Comments
Post a Comment